Pest Control
by I.C. Weener
Summary: Yuna and pals get bibbidi bobbidi booed hardcore.


" _I am the darkest of days."_

\- Wario, _Super Mario Land 3_

" _You are like the buzzing of flies."_

\- Phil Connors, _Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Revenge of Vigo Stockman_

" _Hoytah ayy."_

\- Marie Rose, _Dead or Alive 5_

* * *

The three treasure fairies were a-bloomin' today. The sun was shining through the vines and leaves in curtains of gold. The birds were twittering in their afternoon sonnets. The cottage was silent and the garden was open for business. It was the perfect time for three little sprites named Yuna, Rikku, and Paine to go fetch valuables. Nobody lived here except a nasty old witch who only cared about herself, and those didn't count.

Yuna and Paine buzzed over toward a row of lilacs to inspect what had sprouted since their last visit. Rikku put her attention on an interesting species of plant she had never seen before. Its flowers had long white petals encircling a bright yellow center. The stems of each flower sprouted from the plant's central arteries, and all the arteries lead up to a single nucleus: A sleeping flytrap with thorny green jowls. It looked perfectly safe to investigate for a fairy peacekeeper.

Rikku buzzed in front of one flower. Her wool snippet scarf twisted curiously in the wind as she blinked. The petals seemed to unfurl themselves welcomingly and drew her to float closer. She tilted her head as her eyes became fixed on the blossom's core, enamored by the pollen filigree. They imitated the appearance of stacked of golden coins, a tasty treat for any treasure fairy.

"Hey guys, what about this one?" Rikku excitedly called to her two companions.

Yuna and Paine floated over toward two more flowers near Rikku's. All three were instinctively drawn toward the reproductive filaments the moment they saw the white petals. Paine leaned into hers and reached for her little sword so she could painlessly trim off a speck of pollen.

The flowers violently lunged in a coordinated response, spitting out three stings toward each fairy's revealed waist. Yuna, Rikku, and Paine squeaked together in a collective "Ooo!" the moment the tips of tiny green threads slipped through the miniscule dots of their navels. Fairies were naturally a very ticklish sort.

The flowers snapped their petals around their paralyzed supper in a second. Capillary action sucked the fairies into the flowery canopies until their wings crammed all the way inside and the petals could shut completely.

The buzzing around the plant abruptly stopped. The fairies were put fast to sleep as soon as they were tucked in their new beds.

* * *

Leblanc glamorously passed through the garden path with her purple robe trailing behind her and a wicker basket gently rocking against her hip. This sanctuary to plant life was one of her many handcrafted masterworks, each breed painstakingly sewn like they were her little green children. Each species in attendance held one alchemical property or another, and everything was growing in meticulous order today. The Marisilvers shined like bells, the Lillyshades bowed like darlings, the Catterposies were catterperfect, the…

"Oh, my little Malblossom's come down with the flu!" the witch gasped with her hand to her mouth.

The plant's flytrap head was slouching over its vines. Its leaves swayed in slow rhythms as its veins panted from near exhaustion. Its normally bright emerald complexion looked more like puke green.

But Leblanc spotted something else that told her it wasn't an ordinary botanical virus that was causing her prized bouquet to suffer. She tilted back her pointed Black Mage cap so some of the sunlight could reach her eyes and give her a better view.

Three of the Malbossom's flowers had failed to open that morning, but the rest were beautifully in bloom. An odd symptom by any means. Leblanc wetted her index nail with the tip of her tongue and tenderly picked at the white silky layers of one of the unopened flowers. Her reaction to what she saw peeking out from inside was half alarm and half intrigue.

It was the pixie brunette who liked to show off her rear carapaces in thimble-length shorts. She was curled in the plant's filaments, covered from her wings to her toes in sparkling sleeping pheromones. A tiny green rope pumped her small rippled belly with magically enriched sugars in a symbiotic display of photosynthesis. Her brief and inviting choice of midriff fashion made her an easy fit for the process. She rolled over on her opposite side in her slumber, waving her tiny hand away at Leblanc while her eyes stayed shut.

The other two flowers were almost certainly going to work on the bite-sized blonde bimbo and the grouchy one, and Leblanc didn't bother disturbing them. These three pesky mosquitos in maiden form were the ones who had been picking her flowers and stealing her nicest garden tools all summer long. Cheap little hussies.

Leblanc lifted her nail away and gently tucked Yuna back in the way she found her.

"So that's what's gotten into you, Mal." Leblanc shook her head tsking. "You're squeezing out all of your energy to punish these blasted insects. Even when they're at your mercy they're still a nuisance. I never imagined they'd be dumb enough to get their tummies tucked."

Leblanc looked higher on the on the plant and continued her examination of the other two flowers. She gave them tiny squeezes to determine their density and moisture, rolling them through her fingers like magic globes.

"Well, I'd say you're about done with them, then. It feels like I'll have three good little flower faeries to help me in the garden in another day or two."

That was, of course, if she let the balance of life take its natural course. Treasure fairies were plucked and bloomed into flower fairies if they weren't careful about keeping their place in the food chain, but flower fairies could be coerced to evolve into something even better with a little extra nurturing.

There was also that third possibility. Leblanc could run to the cupboard and fetch a pair of shears. The three bloated flowers would come right off with a quick snip, snip, snip and get tossed back into the soil, or dunked in a jar of oil to create some tropical-smelling potpourri. It would instantly relieve the poor little Malblossom of all its strain, but its flower buds would shrivel and dry out in seconds, and the fairies would quickly follow suit without the precious nutrients their fragile fairy bodies depended on.

Leblanc shook her head and decided against it. She could enchant lives, manipulate lives, or lay a curse to ruin lives, but a good witch would never simply take lives with her bare hands. Even if they were wretched, filthy, disease-carrying, puny lives.

Decisions, decisions. Leblanc tapped her fingers across her chin as she considered the first two options. She could let the captive fairies become something close to what they were now, just more domesticated and with some plant features growing in their hair. Or she could turn them into something drastically more exotic, something that would destroy all but the most essential traces of what they were now and turn them into true plant spawn. The more she considered, the more Leblanc licked her lips at the second option. It may have been just the sort of Grimm fate these little cabbage filchers deserved.

Leblanc walked into her cottage and came back out carrying a bubbling potion in one hand and a sewing needle in the other. She lightly felt the flowers one at a time, squinted her eyes until she found the core of the flower's stem, and slipped a few drops of the potion through the vein using the pin. She worked deftly and patiently until all three flowers had their stems fertilized in this way. She cupped her hand around each bulb and gently blew hot breath to promote more healthy circulation.

The three buds instantly turned a scandalous deep violet and glued their petals shut with resin. The enchanted plant connecting them all pulled its thorny flytrap mouth into a grin and uttered a tiny diabolical " _Mwehehehe_." The delicate surface grazing was over and now the roots were free to grow deep. The fairies were officially bound for the long haul.

Leblanc tapped each chubby purple flower bud with her index nail and smiled.

"Now you take your time teaching those three pesks a lesson, Malblossom," the sorceress whispered through luscious lips. "And be sure to get plenty of sunlight for the next few weeks. I'm counting on you!"

Leblanc leaned forward and gave the plant a tiny kiss on its sprout. She continued her walk up the cobblestone path of her garden chuckling ominously under her breath.

* * *

Petals rustled in the moonlight. A flower opened. A tiny voluptuous figure emerged like a miniature siren rising out of a black swamp. The dark creature cleaned the slime out of her glistening contours by rubbing her wings together in cicada song, a midnight sonata to lost innocence. Two more of the lean and shapely creatures blossomed on the stems above her. All three stretched their arms in tiny squeaky yawns. They hovered out of the flower caps on leathery cricket wings and basked in the rays of the moon.

Their small and smoothly-defined bodies were the color algae-infested tree bark. Their eyes glowed in matching deep violet. Their thin bellies were each dimpled with a tiny broken off knot resembling a pumpkin stem, marking them for all eternity as unnatural creatures created as a byproduct of a dark magical reaction. Anyone who set eyes on their prickled waists would instantly know they had once been bright and beautiful little thing that had done something naughty to get on a witch's bad side. Now they were just beautiful, with a certain over-ripened charm.

The three floating hourglasses turned to one another and giggled in sultry mischief. Together they wafted toward a burning candle sitting outside Leblanc's window.

* * *

It only took a week to housebreak the little demons. They were wild and destructive at first, but they soon began to behave after the first few nights of mist-filled conjuring. Patience, forgiving words, and tiny rewards were all it took to earn their loyalty. That, and letting them share pint-sized whiffs from her pipe to help them stay calm and collected. After all, she and they had a common interest in all things dark and arcane. It wasn't much different than trying to raise three slimy, scaly puppies.

Leblanc worked over a black cauldron sitting on a wooden table. As she waved her arms and said the necessary incantations, a trio of tiny greenish figures floated around the brim of her hat. They watched close and attentively as she conjured. They understood every word she said and every motion she made with skillful mastery, sometimes even mimicking her perfectly.

That was the difference between flower fairies and this rarer species Yuna and her friends had bloomed into. The flower variety were reliable but simple-minded folk who were really only good for spreading pollen. The more magically-infused kind were harder to breed but came with all sorts of clever uses.

"Claws of a white dog," Leblanc ordered for the cauldron.

"Fidomus albinocus," Paine muttered stoically. She floated down, shuffled through the jars on the shelf, and returned with the ingredients.

"Hair of a drowned man," Leblanc ordered.

"Fuzzy bloated bastard, coming right up!" Yuna spiritedly announced as she retrieved the vial. It was the same size as her and twice her weight, but her little wings buzzed with hardly any effort.

Leblanc added everything to the mixture and stirred. When she didn't get the reaction she liked, she paused to scratch her chin.

"I feel like I'm missing something."

Her eyes shifted toward one of her tiny helpers. Rikku looked toward her left, looked toward her right, then nervously pointed at herself.

"Powder from a gremlin faerie's wings." The words floated weightlessly from Leblanc's lips.

"Squiggly time!" Rikku exclaimed with a toothy grin and happily assumed the position. She lay on her stomach over a table beam as the witch delicately rubbed a brush of tiny horse hairs down her oily wings. With each pass of the soft bristles, Rikku shifted her waist like a cat being groomed.

Leblanc tapped the final ingredient into the cauldron and waved her hands over the smoke. The light inside the cottage turned dark green as the concoction brewed, casting the shadow of a toiling witch and her three pet moths on the wall.

* * *

 _Author's note: Yeah, I just rehashed the plot of Fun Times with the Fungi and made it about the weird little fairy forms of the Gullwings from Kingdom Hearts. Fight me._


End file.
